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Comcast and NFL Network Agree to 9-Year Deal

Comcast will make the NFL Network available to 10.8 million of its digital-basic subscribers by Aug. 1, ending nearly three years of legal hostilities with the National Football League by completing a nine-year deal Tuesday.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, will pay significantly less than what the league had originally sought.

“It’s a chapter that’s behind us and not worth going over,” Brian L. Roberts, the chairman of Comcast, said in a conference call. “It wasn’t where we wanted to be or where anybody wanted to be.”

The battle was between a powerful league aggrieved by Comcast’s relegating its channel to a digital sports tier that cost subscribers extra, and a huge cable operator whose customer base is crucial to a network’s exposure.

The dispute was litigated in a New York State court, argued at the Federal Communications Commission and debated publicly, often hotly, by executives from each side. Ultimately, before the court or F.C.C. cases could be decided, Roberts and Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, settled the matter.

“I had to convince Brian that we were intent on creating value and a partnership that made sense,” Goodell said during the call.

Critical to the settlement was the league’s decision to reduce the price it charged for the network, from a monthly subscriber fee of 70 cents to an average of a little over 50 cents through the life of the contract.

“It was always a matter of what was a fair price, in terms of buying it on behalf of 10 million customers,” Roberts said.

The league can boast that the Comcast deal increased to 45 million the total number of its network’s cable and satellite subscribers, fewer than the 52 million at the younger MLB Network, which has had fewer growing pains. And Comcast can say that it fought to get a better deal for its customers.

The league also did not have to cede, or sell, equity in its channel to sweeten the deal, as Major League Baseball did in deals that gave DirecTV, Comcast, Time Warner and Cox one-third of its channel. (During their dispute, the N.F.L. accused Comcast of demanding an interest in the channel in exchange for distribution.)

Comcast will also carry the Red Zone Channel, a part of DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket package. The channel offers brief live coverage of action on Sunday afternoons when teams are inside their opponents’ 20-yard lines. Roberts said Comcast would put the channel into the digital sports tier being vacated by the NFL Network.

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The Red Zone Channel will be available by 2012 for a fee to cable operators, telephone companies and other carriers that cannot get Sunday Ticket. Cable operators have coveted Sunday Ticket, but the league has chosen not to alter its exclusive arrangement with DirecTV, which recently signed a $1-billion-a-year extension.

CBS and Fox, which broadcast all Sunday afternoon games — simultaneously packaged into Sunday Ticket — had to agree to make the Red Zone channel available to a universe of their competitors.

Their assent was part of two-year extensions to their current contracts through 2013, in which each network will pay annual increases of 1 to 2 percent. “When the N.F.L. comes to us and asks for an extension, we enthusiastically say yes,” said Sean McManus, the president of CBS News and Sports.

For the N.F.L., settling the Comcast issue was as crucial as almost any other television deal. The NFL Network has already endured three seasons of showing games not available to a critical mass of Comcast subscribers, a result of Comcast’s dropping the network in 2006 from a broad digital basic level to the sports tier. Comcast said the move was contractually permissible and triggered by the league’s rejection of its offer of more than $400 million a year to carry eight regular-season games on its Versus network. The league fought that claim, and it gave the rights to the eight games to the NFL Network to enhance its value and offerings.

The N.F.L. swiftly portrayed Comcast as the leader of a group of recalcitrant major cable operators, like Time Warner, Cablevision and Charter, that was depriving fans of its channel’s array of programming.

Comcast insisted that the channel was overpriced and denied the league’s accusations that it gave its own networks, Versus and the Golf Channel, preferential treatment on its cable systems.

On Tuesday, the acrimony was put aside and the legal actions were being dropped.

“We don’t like to fight with partners,” Goodell said.

Roberts added, “I’d say that if Roger had not personally taken the reins, this would have taken longer and might not be a happy and proper outcome.”

Now, the league will presumably offer Time Warner, Cablevision and Charter terms similar to those given to Comcast to gain footholds in those systems. “We’re always interested in broader distribution,” Goodell said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B19 of the New York edition with the headline: Comcast and NFL Network Agree to 9-Year Deal. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe